A PET scan uses which of the following tracer materials?
High-Yield Explanation
A PET scan uses a small amount of a radioactive drug, or tracer, to show differences between healthy tissue and diseased tissue. The most commonly used tracer is called FDG (fluorodeoxyglucose), so the test is sometimes called an FDG-PET scan. Before the PET scan, a small amount of FDG is injected into the patient. Because cancer grows at a faster rate than healthy tissue, cancer cells absorb more of the FDG. The PET scanner detects the radiation given off by the FDG and produces color-coded images of the body that show both normal and cancerous tissue.